But for some reason, the school read his answers before shipping them off, a violation of test protocol. No one expected what happened next.

"We headed down the trail and we got down towards the edge of the bogs and we saw him hanging from a tree on the edge of the bogs," Andrews said. "I knew he was gone. He was cold. His lips were blue."

Today, Andrews is consumed by what-ifs, as he points fingers at Hanson Middle School. The investigation into the 14-year-old's suicide revealed more details, with one friend telling police Samuel said he was called an "embarrassment" by the school because of his answers and was then worried about getting into the high school of his choice.

The father is outraged, that the school allegedly violated MCAS rules.

"No one is to read, review or change answers," he said.

"Do you think this is what pushed him over the edge?" 5 Investigates' Mike Beaudet asked him.

"I do," he answered.

"That's a violation of the test protocol," said Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

He said the Hanson tragedy is part of a bigger problem with standardized testing.

"It's a piece of the overwhelming pressure that schools feel themselves under to do well," he said.

5 Investigates examined red flags in standardized testing in Massachusetts over the last five years, cases where the state started its own investigations.

The allegations range from students yelling answers across the room to teachers actually cheating.

"Teachers or proctors have changed answers in answer books or have directed students to change answers," said Jeff Wulfson, deputy commissioner at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

He said the problems are not widespread but remain a serious concern.

"Why do you think that happens?" Beaudet asked him.

"I don't think there's any mystery to that. There are always those who are looking to appear that they're doing better than perhaps they are."

The state has thrown out test scores repeatedly.

In Leominster, that happened because a Samoset Middle School teacher was "pointing out wrong answers and telling students to fix them."

In Taunton scores were invalidated because of a "truly alarming" number of erased answers at Mulcahey Elementary School that were changed from "incorrect to correct." The next year, the scores for those same students plummeted.

And at Boston's Eliot Innovation School in the city's North End, scores were invalidated after an unusually high number of erased answers were changed from incorrect to correct.

And in Chicopee, a teacher at Bowe Elementary School helped students by "looking through answer booklets after they had been turned in" and "instructing students to change answers and add more information," records show.

In all three of those cases, the state threw out the test scores and sent the findings to its legal department for possible disciplinary action.

"I think it's just human nature that occasionally there'd be somebody who wants to get an advantage out of that process," Wulfson said.

The department suspended a Chelsea High School biology teacher’s educator license for two years after she was fired in 2008 for "creating a document designed to assist (students)" on the science and technology MCAS.

Since 2011, the state revoked has two teaches' licenses over MCAS problems.

Another educator's license was surrendered, another suspended.

In Hanson, the end result was tragic, though it's part of an ongoing education department investigation. The superintendent of the Whitman-Hanson Regional School District declined to comment other than to say the school remains deeply saddened by Samuel's death.

The state's Wulfson added, "I can tell you we were certainly heartsick to hear about that. Nobody wants to have a family to have to go through that."